Edgar Poe was born in Boston, January 19, 1809, the second child of Eliza Arnold Poe,
a well-known actress, and David Poe, Jr., also an actor. Early in 1810, David Poe
abandoned his family; nothing is known of his fate. Later that same year Eliza gave
birth to her third child, Rosalie. By the summer of 1811, Eliza's health was failing
and she died on December 8, 1811, in Richmond, Virginia, at the age of twenty-four.
The eldest son went to live with the Poe family in Baltimore, the infant daughter
went to a Richmond family named MacKenzie, and Edgar was taken in by John and
Frances (Fanny) Allan.

John Allan, a partner in the trading firm The House of Ellis and Allan, promised to
provide Edgar with a liberal education and he certainly provided the boy with a
standard of living superior to the one to which he had been accustomed. The House of
Ellis and Allan was prospering so well that in 1815 they decided to open an office
in London. Six-and-a-half-year-old Edgar accompanied John and Fanny to England where
he attended several boarding schools. After a slow beginning, the London offices
seemed to be doing well. However, in 1819 the bottom fell out of the tobacco market,
the business was ruined, and the family returned to Virginia in 1820.

As John Allan sought to regain his financial footing, Edgar continued his schooling,
doing well in Latin, French, and sports, often leading the other boys in games and
battle drills. Poe faced many of the psychological problems associated with
orphans--feelings of abandonment and a need to not just succeed, but to win--and the
fact that John Allan never formally adopted him seems to have added to his emotional
issues.

In 1825 a wealthy relative died and left a large fortune to John Allan, immediately
solving his business and financial woes. In 1826 Poe entered the University of
Virginia, then in its second year. Poe acquitted himself well as a student, studying
ancient and modern languages, but also ran up debts which added to the growing
friction between himself and Allan. Poe wished to remain at the University beyond
the usual one-year term, but Allan refused, wishing instead for Poe to settle
himself in some business. After a series of angry clashes, Poe left the Allan home
in Richmond and went to Boston. Finding it difficult to support himself, Poe
enlisted in the Army. He remained there for two years, reaching the rank of Sergeant
Major for artillery, before deciding that he had had enough. He sought Allan's aid
in obtaining a discharge but help came grudgingly and only after Poe declared his
intention to attend West Point.

Poe's term at West Point lasted just a year, from March of 1830 to March of 1831. He
performed well in the beginning, but late in the year John Allan remarried (Fanny
Allan had died while Edgar was in the army) and wrote to Poe stating his wish for an
end to their relationship. These events affected Poe's desire for the military life
and he set about getting himself court-martialed and discharged from West Point.
From there he went to New York City. In April he made his way to Baltimore to seek
aid from the remaining members of his father's family. He moved in with his aunt,
Maria Clemm and her daughter, Virginia. Over the next three years little is known
about Poe's activities. He had difficulty supporting himself, he may have been
briefly engaged, or at least attached, to a young woman whose family objected, and
he spent time with his brother who was also living in Baltimore. He also wrote a
great deal. He had been writing steadily over the previous ten years, publishing two
small pamphlets at his own expense, and his goal became making a living with his
writing.

In 1834 Poe married his cousin Virginia, who was not quite fourteen at the time, and
began seriously seeking a means of supporting "his family." In the spring of 1835,
the family moved back to Richmond where Poe took a position with the Southern Literary Messenger. Poe used the opportunity to
publish several of his poems and short tales in the paper, but he also began
developing his reputation as a pugnacious critic by contributing scathing reviews of
popular contemporary authors. In 1837 Poe left his position as editor of the Messenger by mutual agreement with the owner after a
number of disagreements over Poe's vicious articles.

Poe spent the rest of his life attempting to establish himself as a creditable force
on the American literary scene. He tried to start his own literary paper on several
occasions, but when that failed he continued to work for other papers in the
capacity of critic and editor, most notably Burton's
Gentleman's Magazine in Philadelphia (1839-1840) and The Broadway Journal in New York (1845). Poe's desire to
be in charge, his vituperative critical attacks on people he disliked or disagreed
with, coupled with an ongoing problem with alcohol made it difficult for him to
maintain a long-term working relationship with magazine owners and editors.

In 1847 Virginia Poe died after a long battle with tuberculosis. Poe was devastated.
Suffering ill-health himself, and beaten down after his long battle with poverty, he
continued to write and lecture, but his mental state seemed to decline. He was found
unconscious on a street in Baltimore in the fall of 1849 and he died on October 7. A
brief obituary in the Baltimore Clipper reported that
he died of "congestion of the brain." It has been assumed by most scholars that
alcoholism killed Poe, but a new theory which is gaining credence speculates that
Poe actually died of rabies.

Poems, essays, correspondence, and catalogs make up the bulk of the Edgar Allan Poe
Collection, 1766-1974 (bulk 1829-1850). The collection is organized into two series:
I. Poe Works and Letters, 1829-1911, and II. Materials about Poe and His Works,
1766-1974. This collection has been re-cataloged as part of a retrospective
conversion project.

The Poe Works and Letters series contains about fifteen works mostly handwritten by
Poe, some of which are fragments and all of which are from the last fourteen years
of his life. About seventy letters written by Poe are also present, spanning
1829-1849 and readily demonstrating Poe's wide range of correspondents. Most of the
letters are personal, though many include details of business and pleas for loans.
Many of Poe's letters and works are accompanied by correspondence between book
dealers and William Koester, descriptions of the items as they appeared in auction
or sale catalogues, and other provenance information.

Materials about Poe and His Works is a broad-ranging series which encompasses a large
number of letters between friends, relatives, collectors, and critics of Poe. While
not all of the correspondence is specifically about Poe, it provides context for his
life. Also included in this series are a number of works, most about Poe's life and
work, but also some contextual works. Additionally, there are many items of Poe
ephemera, much of it collected by James Whitty, as well as a number of items
withdrawn from books donated by Poe scholars and fans, and a few forgeries which
were at one time attributed to Poe.

Elsewhere in the Ransom Center, there are over one hundred photographs of Poe, his
family, friends, and collectors located in the Literary Files of the Photography
Collection, as well as a large number of Poe-related art pieces in the Art
Collection. Poe books and also sheet music with musical settings of Poe poems are
present in the Library. A number of newspapers which contain Poe contributions are
preserved in their entirety and descriptions can be accessed in the University's
online catalog by searching "Newspaper KPO" as "Other Call Number." An extensive
collection of newspaper clippings covering the publication and criticism of Poe's
work, other printed ephemera, and five scrapbooks are present in the Center's
Vertical File Collection. The Personal Effects Collection includes a desk used by
Poe along with several other artifacts.

The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center acquired its collection of Poeana largely
through the purchase of the James H. Whitty and William H. Koester collections. Two
of the most active American gatherers of Poe materials, Whitty and Koester are
thought to have held the largest private collections of Poeana anywhere.

James H. Whitty pulled together an impressive collection of Poe-related materials
including many letters, signatures, receipts, and contextual working materials which
he used in writing The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
(1911) and The Genius and Character of Edgar Allan
Poe (1929).

William H. Koester began collecting Poeana in the early 1930s. He completed over
sixty purchases of signed letters, poems, essays, and short stories, as well as the
Whitty Collection, acquiring between 1934 and 1947 most of the original Poe
materials available for sale. He obtained two unpublished letters and variants of
two critical essays by the time of his last purchase in 1962.

The University of Texas at Austin acquired the Whitty-Koester collection in 1966.
Additional Poe materials have been purchased at auction, from book dealers, and from
private individuals. A few items in the collection were originally included in the
Wrenn and Hanley collections.

Digital surrogates of all original manuscripts and letters by Edgar Allan Poe are
available in the Edgar Allan Poe Digital Collection at http://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/poedc/, along with selected additional
Poe-related documents, manuscripts, and letters from this collection, as well as
art, books, ephemera, personal effects, photographs, and sheet music from other
Ransom Center collections.

Series I. Poe Works and Letters, 1829-1911

The Poe Works and Letters series is divided into four subseries: A. Works,
1835-1911; B. Letters, 1829-1849; C. Legal Documents, 1841-1848; and D.
Personal Effects. Because each work and letter in this series is described
individually in the following container list, there are no separate indexes
of Poe works or correspondents included in this guide. "Moldenhauer numbers"
(e.g. M1, M2, etc.) are included in the following container list; these
numbers correlate with detailed bibliographical descriptions that appear in
Joseph J. Moldenhauer's A Descriptive Catalog of
Edgar Allan Poe Manuscripts in the Humanities Research Center Library
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973).

The Works subseries, arranged alphabetically by title, includes fourteen
complete and partial critical essays written by Poe as well as two long
tales and six drafts and copies of poems. A complete version of The Domain of Arnheim, written on small pieces
of paper connected together and then rolled into two scrolls, is
particularly noteworthy as is a published copy of The
Raven and Other Poems with corrections and revisions by Poe.
Other complete pieces include handwritten and typescript versions of "The Spectacles," a Valentine's Day poem to
Miss Olivia Hunter, and an essay on American poetesses. Fragmentary pieces
of other works are also present, including segments of a proposed critical
work to have been called Literary America, as well as some pieces associated
with Marginalia, and a fair copy of the last stanza of "The Raven." A unique and particularly
beautiful item, Selected Poems of Edgar Allan
Poe, is an illuminated manuscript containing "The Raven," "The Bells," and "Lenore," produced and bound by Messrs. Robert Riviere &
Son in 1911.

The Letters subseries contains seventy-one letters or fragments of letters
written by Poe between 1829 and 1849. While the majority of the letters are
personal correspondence, many of the letters carry a business-like tone as
Poe frequently sought financial support from his friends and acquaintances,
either in an effort to start a new project or merely for subsistence. The
recipients of this correspondence include Charles Bristed, George Eveleth,
George Graham, Horace Greeley, Rufus Griswold, Sarah J. Hale, John P.
Kennedy, Estelle Anna Lewis, John Neal, Frances S. Osgood, Frederick W.
Thomas, Sarah Helen Whitman, and others. This subseries also includes a
single letter received by Poe, from Nathaniel Parker Willis.

The small Legal Documents subseries includes several promissory notes signed
by Poe to various friends and business partners including John W. Albright,
John Bisco, and L. A. Godey, as well as contracts signed with John Bisco and
G. P. Putnam.

The Personal Effects subseries includes a lock of Poe's hair and a file of
letters and certified documents authenticating a desk used by Poe when he
worked for the Southern Literary
Messenger.

Series II. Materials about Poe and His Works, 1766-1974

The Materials about Poe and His Works series is divided into four subseries:
A. Works about Poe, 1766-1973; B. Correspondence about Poe, 1780-1974; C.
Poe Ephemera and Book Withdrawals; and D. Poe Forgeries. Some of this
material is, at best, loosely associated with Poe, and represents the
collecting proclivities of Whitty and Koester.

The Works about Poe subseries, arranged alphabetically by author, contains
Hervey Allen's Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar
Allan Poe, Julian Hawthorne's "My
Adventure with Edgar Allan Poe," Thomas Mabbott's thesis New
Light on Poe: Additional Notes on the Poems Prior to 1831, and Walt
Whitman's essay "Edgar Poe's
Significance." In addition to writings specifically about Poe there
are a number of poems by Poe's contemporaries and a few items which provide
historical context for Poe's life. These include a 1781 petition signed by
David Poe, a contract for the sale of land by Joseph Logan in 1818, poems by
Estelle Lewis, and John Ambler's last will and testament (1766). Also
present in this section are several works describing the Whitty and Koester
collections. Individual items in this section are listed in the Index of
Works by Other Authors in this guide.

The Correspondence about Poe subseries contains materials specifically
relating to Poe as well as to the collection of his writings. For example,
William Griswold carried on extensive correspondence with George Woodberry
concerning a proposed book, The Life of Edgar Allan Poe, which was never
written, and several letters were written to Griswold seeking to purchase
his Poe materials. There are also a few letters from people associated with
Poe, such as John Allan and Maria Clemm, which are present because of that
association, rather than any specific references to Poe in the letters. Some
of the more notable correspondents in this section include Charles
Baudelaire, Charles Dickens, Horace Greeley, William Griswold, Oliver
Wendell Holmes, John P. Kennedy, William Koester, David Poe, Edmund Stedman,
James H. Whitty, George Woodberry, and others. Individual letter writers are
listed in the Index of Correspondents in this guide.

Poe Ephemera and Book Withdrawals includes booksellers' descriptions of Poe
materials, letterhead and bills from hotels Poe stayed in (not bills to
Poe), notes and letters found in collections of books by and about Poe
donated to the Ransom Center, and a collection of receipts and signatures of
people connected to Poe or who are otherwise well known. A list of the
authors of these signatures and receipts is included in this guide.

The final subseries is Poe Forgeries. This section contains two letters and
one poem which were previously attributed to Poe, but which have since been
identified as forgeries. The poem "The Lady
Hubbard" was printed in Godey's
Magazine in December 1849 along with a letter, dated April 1, 1849,
and both were attributed to Poe. The second letter, addressed to Thomas
Warren Field and dated August 9, 1845, was copied from either the facsimile
reproduced on the cover of the William E. Benjamin catalogue (No. 30, April
1890), a rare catalogue of Poe materials, or possibly from the original
letter. The original letter was most recently located in the Bradley Martin
Collection, New York.

["The Rationale of Verse"]:
First because they were scholars...; To return to equality..., 2
handwritten fragments, 1848, 2 pages (M14- M15)

Container

1.12

["The Raven"]: And the Raven,
never flitting, still is sitting - still
is sitting..., handwritten fair copy of last stanza, circa 1846, 1 page
(M6)

Container

13.2-3

The Raven and Other Poems and
Tales, two printed works bound
together, with handwritten author revisions and corrections, 1845 (M105)

Container

12.1

Selected Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
[includes "The Raven," " The Bells," and "Lenore"], handwritten/illuminated
manuscript copy on parchment. Written in gothic-style script with
decorated initials, includes images of Poe, the Raven, and the dead
Lenore. Bound and illuminated by Messrs. Robert Riviere & Son,
1911, 17 leaves

Box and folder numbers are followed by a number in parenthesis which indicates the
number of items by that person. A single item is indicated where there is no number
in parenthesis following the box and folder number.

Campbell, Killis, 1872-1937--8.6 (4)

There are 4 letters from Killis Campbell in Box 8, Folder 6. And in the example,

Ambler, John--8.3

there is one letter from John Ambler located in Box 8, Folder 3.

This index includes only letters filed in Subseries B. (Correspondence about Poe) of
Series II. Materials about Poe and His Works.

This listing provides the location of items referred to by the numbers assigned in
Joseph J. Moldenhauer's A Descriptive Catalog of Edgar Allan
Poe Manuscripts in the Humanities Research Center Library (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1973).